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Evil spirits
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Tribal doctors would preform ceremonies to get rid of the evil spirits. They would also use herbs and plants as forms of medicine. They also used a form of trephining where the tribal doctor would remove a part of the cranium.
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Belladonna and atropine it is made from the poisonous nightshade plant. They relieve muscle spasm, and GI pain. Morphine is made from opium poppy. It is for severe pain, it is addicting and only used when nothing else works.
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Digitalis comes from the foxglove plant. It is given in pill form, into veins, and by injection. In early times the people chewed the leaves to strengthen and slow the heartbeat. Quinine comes from the bark of the cinchona tree. It controls fevers, relives muscle spasms and prevents malaria.
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Ancient Egyptians were the first people to keep accurate health records. The physicians were the priests. They were superstitious so they called the gods to help them. They learned how to identify certain diseases and used medicine, splints, and treated blood disorder by using leeches.
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The ancient Chinese were some of the first to use acupuncture therapy. It was originally used with stone tools. It has become the advanced practice of Chinese acupuncture used commonly today.
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The Greeks were the first to look into if illness was natural or spiritual. They also kept records on what they observed. The religious practices didn’t allow the bodies to be dissected. Hippocrates took his information off of the knowledge of anatomy and the physiology on observation of the external body. He took notes on the signs and symptoms of diseases. He wrote the standard of ethics called the Oath of Hippocrates. It is the standard for medical ethics. Physicians still take this oath.
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The Roman’s were the first to organize their medical care. They were also the first to have a hospital type system. The physicians had rooms in their houses for sick patients. Eventually public buildings for the sick were created. The Roman’s learned from the Greeks, that some diseases were from lack of sanitation. So they created sanitation systems that brought clean water into their cities and built sewers for the waste to go. The Roman’s also created public baths with filtering systems.
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The study of medicine was stopped because the Roman’s were overcome by the Huns. For 1,000 years medicine was only practiced in convents and monasteries. The church believed that death and life were for god to decide. So because of that monks and priests did not have any interest in figuring out how the human body worked.
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Since they would not study medicine they had other ways of “treating” the disease. The primary “treatment” was prayer. The medicine consisted of herbal mixtures, and the care was custodial. The monks would collect and translate the writings of Roman and Greek physicians.
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Epidemics in the Middle Age caused millions to die. Epidemics like the Bubonic Plague or the Black Death killed 60 million people. Others like Small Pox, Diphtheria, Syphilis, and Tuberculosis. These illnesses are not always life threatening today.
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The renaissance era had the rebirth of universities, and medical schools for research. They started to search for new ideas about disease rather than believe it was in gods hands. They also accepted dissection for study purposes. The printing press was invented around this time, as well as publishing books. This allowed for greater access of knowledge from the research.
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Leonardo da Vinci studied and recorded the anatomy of the body.
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Gabriele Fallopius discovered the fallopian tubes of the female anatomy.
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Bartolommeo Eustachio discovered the tube leading from the ear to the throat (Eustachian tube).
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William Harvey used his knowledge to understand physiology, and he described the circulation of blood pumping of the heart.
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Antonie von Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope, showing that there is life beyond what the eye can see. He also found the bacteria that causes tooth decay by scraping it off his teeth.
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Apothecaries or pharmacies were created in medieval England during this time.
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Benjamin Franklin discovered that colds could be passed from person to person.
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The medical students learned in lectures as well as observed patients on the bedside. They would then dissect a deceased person to figure out how the disease spread through the person.
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Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen.
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Edward Jenner discovered the vaccine for small pox which saved millions.
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Rene Laennec invented the stethoscope.
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Florence Nightingale attracted well educated, dedicated women to the Nightingale School of Nursing.
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Ignaz Semmelweis identified the cause of childbed fever.
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Louis Pasteur discovered that microorganisms are everywhere. -
Dimitri Ivanovski discovered that some diseases were caused by virus's.
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Joseph Lister used carbolic acid on wounds to kill germs that cause infection. -
Ernst von Bergmann devolved asepsis a method to make surgery areas germ free.
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Robert Koch introduced the importance of cleanliness and sanitation.
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Paul Ehrlich discovered the effect of medicine on disease causing microorganisms.
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Wilhelm Roentgen discovered x-rays in 1895. -
Anesthesia was a way to put patients to sleep while preforming surgeries safely.
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Sir Alexander Fleming found that penicillin killed life treating bacteria. -
Sigmund Freud discovered the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind. -
Gerhard Domagk discovered sulfonamide compounds. -
Jonas Salk discovered that a dead polio virus could cause immunity to poliomyelitis. -
Albert Sabin used a live polio virus. -
Francis Crik and James Watson discovered the molecular structure of DNA.
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Christian Barnard preformed the first successful heart transplant. -
Ben Carson continues to be a pioneer in separating Siamese twins. -
Chinese medicine practitioners, chiropractors, not having to be in the hospital for long periods of time, telemedicine, electronic communications.
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